Have you ever watched a
small white cloud dissolve.
into a background of blue space?
My Search is for the kind of consciousness which could do just
that
to the causes of world friction.
We have been lost within
sterile horizons.
Psychic forces know no
boundaries.
To understand the relationships and currents trying together
the whole creation,
we must use the whole horizon of consciousness.
We need an education of
the spirit.
The most important things belong first, not last, or
never.
In search of a new world,
the wings of the spirit must not be clipped.
From time immemorial, the
universe of the subconscious
has been known most clearly in the wilderness---
a universe of whose qualities and meanings words are
faint symbols.
The insight of great
creators penetrates the superstructure of consciousness.
Can those of us who have to arrow in our being be neutral?
A sound arises out of the
earth---
a singing, a friendliness.
There is mighty contagion
in the qualities of things---
primitive and authentic joy in closeness
to vital running water, fire, wind,
vast integrity in real experience of the earth, the
stars,
subtle and dynamic wonder in peak and cloud.
An inquiry now, into the
roots of our being.
What is sanity?
Sometimes it seems as if
only things like blades of grass have sanity---
as if only through their serenity, their mute virtue
and wisdom,
could we gain a sense of life as it might become.
Generations have dimly
felt that somehow within nature lies a template
for guidance---
that genuine revelation lies within the livingness of
grass,
of cloud, of light---
a revelation sharpening our knowing of the roots of
kindness,
the beginnings of
humility.
One foot of beach sand:
see it, feel it.
Search out its lines, its arrangements,
its acceptance of inevitables.
of destiny in the laws of gravity and of light
reflection.
A glistening silent world.
Imagine all the must be happening there, beyond our knowing.
A match, lit out of the
wind in the cup of the hand,
survives most surely if tilted down
and slowly revolved when kindled.
The same thing happens to kindling twigs --- resinous twigs,
picked
not off the ground, but from the slender tips of dead
tree branches,
and broken to desired length by tapping over a boulder.
These should be held in the hand like a bouquet pointing
downward until
they blaze, then laid on the ground, and twigs of
increasing size
added at varying angles --- never parallel, lest you
smother the flames.
Now set your can of water on flat earth or coals, and tuck small
twigs
about it --- small twigs caress your billycan.
Fire should be concentrated to windward --- away from the side
to be grabbed---
and if your billycan has a handle of bailing wire, a
lifting stick
made ready.
And, as soon as the precious hot water is poured into wash basin
and cup,
a second batch is put on the heat.
For what? Why, to get places socially!
The arrival of free hot water is one of the most potent
social entrees
in the camping world --- especially if you give your
first batch away!
I find this gentle puttering, making an art of a billycan fire,
more fun than any game.
But the praise of billycan fires and humble generosity
has never been sufficiently sung.
Firelighting stretches
past frontier days into archaic vistas.
There is a long history of man and fire.
Something from the past descends
and flows down silently on firewatchers,
like the dim racial memory of rain.
Untrammelled, a roving
spirit responds to faint implication and symbol---
to the fall of rain.
In time of rain, the archaic being stirs.
The infinity of soft sounds, the silken pervasion of falling
water,
distills a love shelter, fireside, home, sweet air,
greeness,
timelessness, renewal.
All these belong to the gentleness of rain
and the flow and benediction after rain.
Trouble is a fierce rain
that drives us to the shelter of our friends.
And there is the rain of tears,
distilling the memory of great love and its
expansiveness,
making of rain an inner light, a subtle possession of
the spirit.
Consider the life of
trees.
Aside from the axe, what trees acquire from man is
inconsiderable.
What man may acquire from trees is immeasurable.
From their mute there flows a poise, in silence,
a lovely sound and motion in response to wind.
What peace comes to those aware of the voice and bearing of
trees!
Trees do not scream for attention.
A tree, a rock, has no pretence, only a real growth out of
itself,
in close communion with the universal spirit.
A tree retains a deep serenity.
It establishes in the earth not only its root system but also
those roots
of its beauty and its unknown consciousness.
Sometimes one may sense a glisten of that consciousness, and
with such
perspective, feel that man is not necessarily the
highest form of life.
Tree qualities, after long
communion, come to reside in man.
As stillness enhances sound, so through little things
the joy of living expands.
One is aware, lying under trees,
of the roots and directions of one's whole being.
Perceptions drift in from earth and sky.
A vast healing begins.
The days of our lives must
become precious.
In all heaven and earth,
there is this one thing to do:
take your time.
Enjoy the perfection of what you are doing.
Enjoy accomplishing it exquisitely.
Human life must know
ecstasy.
I take my mountains as
music.
The mountains wake a singing undercurrent,
then overtones,
then sing with you.
Music haunts the high
country like a hymn,
floats in the cold sunny air
moulds the clouds
filtering those floods of light and shadow
that forever clothe the mountains anew---
Stop and listen to the birds on these high ridges!
O, to emulate this mountain music!
Music arrives in the deep
hum
of river and wind through the forest,
speaks through wave-lines in sunlight
and in shimmer of wind rippling---
until we too fuse with it,
fairly humming its key and clef,
swelling the chorus, joining its universal breadth.
We crossed the pass on a
day of thunder.
Cloud tunnels into the far
reaches of space
revealed an unearthly design and motion,
and a towering resonance filled the canyons.
From here we must go down,
down ten thousand feet,
down to accustomed levels.
down to the blare and cry of ordinary living.
From within the sounds and
banners of the vast horizon,
without words, into an inner silence, came:
Remember well this magnitude.
Lift your eyes,
that the great
meanings shall not flow by unheeded.
See.
The world's beauty carries in trust
the importance of your
salvation.
To some who think
themselves wise, mountains are piles of dirt.
To them, science and the microscope reveal the wilderness to be
a record of struggle and failure,
a battleground to the death.
And they conclude that our main concern,
under the same unaltered laws,
is to prepare for a life and death struggle.
Yet the aggression of
weeds against flowers, if left alone,
create a balance and fitness.
Within each species lies its destiny,
its place in the wilderness economy and order.
Where do flowers look do well as when left to natural law?
Design of deep
momentums---
Trees tragic, trees broken by winter, trees in all stages of
decay,
dead branches and pine needles strewn upon the snow,
in patterns dictated by subtle law:
of wind, gravitation, carefree instinct.
Yet each fallen bough,
each dead stump,
intensifies the richness of the forest.
Out of the vast process of
evolution through need,
out of the cycle of passing forms,
arises eternal, elemental beauty.
Intense beauty is
liberation.
Here again, as everywhere,
the great river passing---
I passing,
you passing . . .
.
. . forever flowing down through time,
flowing through many
channels,
fading out of the embrace
of its names . . .
. . . simple as the voice of a child
and never to be quite known.
In this light and breeze
are resurrection echoes.
Suddenly one becomes aware
one lives in an eternity.
and hears strange footsteps
ascending anciently trodden pathways.
Consciousness projects
itself
like a headland into the seas.
Headlands acquire sea atmosphere;
headlands are poised
in the sound of waves,
headlands extended
in long dreaming lines of
shore.
From the unknown,
from the immense and infinite,
weaving into consciousness
like long fingers of fog
through coastal canyons,
comes a far-off singing.
Out of the sea, in vast
currents,
a mystic essence arises---
essence of the infinite godliness
which creates worlds.
A new astronomy of the
spirit
should become a conscious goal of man.
Our lives like dreams
endure
and reach out over the universe.
Nothing real is to itself alone.
There are sidestreams to rivers; there are overtones to thought.
Great love reaches out
and is involved in the world's purposes.
Our loves are only symbols
of an unknown immortality.
Where communion is deep, there exists no separation at all,
for what needs telling those we love is understood
already,
and what is supposed to be gone and past
is often more real than
ever.
Through the sculpture of experience,
the part of ourselves which survives,
like cloud, resolves continuously.
This is the spirit of my hope and my religion.
Love and the loss of love,
the loss of life, frustrations in one's hopes, birth---
to each of us these are mysteries.
Through these come love and pity for the world's misery
and a sustained wonder at the long-range continuity
underrunning all events,
all material things,
rooted in a spiritual
universe.
Faith in a deep purpose dawns.
There are days when a high
cold wind races out of space,
the space of stars.
Within vast vistas, one feels alone.
In such solitude, true religion is born.
From these mountains and
cloud haloes
ascend eternal meanings.
A great world music floods consciousness.
A larger love flows into living,
from which vast and subtle change
shall descend upon the nations,
Bringing healing.
__________
Write,
Cedric. "Cedric Wright: Words of the Earth." Verse,
Edited by Nancy Newhall.
The Sierra Club, 1960, pp. 16-90.
-----
--- All material is copyright protected ---